The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (95 page)

See also K. Sneppen et al., “Evolution As a Self-Organized Critical Phenomenon,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
92.11 (May 23, 1995): 5209–13; Elisabeth S. Vrba, “Environment and Evolution: Alternative Causes of the Temporal Distribution of Evolutionary Events,”
South African Journal of Science
81 (1985): 229–36.

15.
As I will discuss in
chapter 6
, if the speed of light is not a fundamental limit to rapid transmission of information to remote portions of the universe, then intelligence and computation will continue to expand exponentially until they saturate the potential of matter and energy to support computation throughout the entire universe.

16.
Biological evolution continues to be of relevance to humans, however, in that disease processes such as cancer and viral diseases use evolution against us (that is, cancer cells and viruses evolve to counteract specific countermeasures such as chemotherapy drugs and antiviral medications respectively). But we can use our human intelligence to outwit the intelligence of biological evolution by attacking disease processes at sufficiently fundamental levels and by using “cocktail” approaches that attack a disease in several orthogonal (independent) ways at once.

17.
Andrew Odlyzko, “Internet Pricing and the History of Communications,” AT&T Labs Research, revised version February 8, 2001,
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications1b.pdf
.

18.
Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey, June 2004,
http://www.ctia.org/research_statistics/index.cfm/AID/10030
.

19.
Electricity, telephone, radio, television, mobile phones: FCC,
www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Notices/2000/fc00057a.xls
. Home computers and Internet use: Eric C. Newburger, U.S. Census Bureau,“Home Computers and Internet Use in the United States: August 2000” (September 2001),
http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p23-207.pdf
. See also “The Millennium Notebook,”
Newsweek
, April 13, 1998, p.
14
.

20.
The paradigm-shift rate, as measured by the amount of time required to adopt new communications technologies, is currently doubling (that is, the amount of
time for mass adoption—defined as being used by a quarter of the U.S. population—is being cut in half) every nine years. See also note 21.

21.
The “Mass Use of Inventions” chart in this chapter on p.
50
shows that the time required for adoption by 25 percent of the U.S. population steadily declined over the past 130 years. For the telephone, 35 years were required compared to 31 for the radio—a reduction of 11 percent, or 0.58 percent per year in the 21 years between these two inventions. The time required to adopt an invention dropped 0.60 percent per year between the radio and television, 1.0 percent per year between television and the PC, 2.6 percent per year between the PC and the mobile phone, and 7.4 percent per year between the mobile phone and the World Wide Web. Mass adoption of the radio beginning in 1897 required 31 years, while the Web required a mere 7 years after it was introduced in 1991—a reduction of 77 percent over 94 years, or an average rate of 1.6 percent reduction in adoption time per year. Extrapolating this rate for the entire twentieth century results in an overall reduction of 79 percent for the century. At the current rate of reducing adoption time of 7.4 percent each year, it would take only 20 years at today’s rate of progress to achieve the same reduction of 79 percent that was achieved in the twentieth century. At this rate, the paradigm-shift rate doubles (that is, adoption times are reduced by 50 percent) in about 9 years. Over the twenty-first century, eleven doublings of the rate will result in multiplying the rate by 2
¹¹
, to about 2,000 times the rate in 2000. The increase in rate will actually be greater than this because the current rate will continue to increase as it steadily did over the twentieth century.

22.
Data from 1967–1999, Intel data, see Gordon E. Moore, “Our Revolution,”
http://www.sia-online.org/downloads/Moore.pdf
. Data from 2000–2016, International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) 2002 Update and 2004 Update,
http://public.itrs.net/Files/2002Update/2002Update.pdf
and
http://www.itrs.net/Common/2004Update/2004_00_Overview.pdf
.

23.
The ITRS DRAM cost is the cost per bit (packaged microcents) at production. Data from 1971–2000: VLSI Research Inc. Data from 2001–2002: ITRS, 2002 Update, Table 7a, Cost-Near-Term Years, p.
172
. Data from 2003–2018: ITRS, 2004 Update, Tables 7a and 7b, Cost-Near-Term Years, pp.
20
–
21
.

24.
Intel and Dataquest reports (December 2002), see Gordon E. Moore, “Our Revolution,”
http://www.sia-online.org/downloads/Moore.pdf
.

25.
Randall Goodall, D. Fandel, and H. Huffet, “Long-Term Productivity Mechanisms of the Semiconductor Industry,” Ninth International Symposium on Silicon Materials Science and Technology, May 12–17, 2002, Philadelphia, sponsored by the Electrochemical Society (ECS) and International Sematech.

26.
Data from 1976–1999: E. R. Berndt, E. R. Dulberger, and N. J. Rappaport, “Price and Quality of Desktop and Mobile Personal Computers: A Quarter Century of History,” July 17, 2000,
http://www.nber.org/~confer/2000/si2000/berndt.pdf
. Data from 2001–2016: ITRS, 2002 Update, On-Chip Local Clock in Table 4c: Performance and Package Chips: Frequency On-Chip Wiring Levels—Near-Term Years, p.
167
.

27.
See note
26
for clock speed (cycle times) and note
24
for cost per transistor.

28.
Intel transistors on microprocessors:
Microprocessor Quick Reference Guide
, Intel Research,
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/quickrefyr.htm
. See also Silicon Research Areas, Intel Research,
http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm
.

29.
Data from Intel Corporation. See also Gordon Moore, “No Exponential Is Forever . . . but We Can Delay ‘Forever,’” presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), February 10, 2003, ftp://download.intel.com/research/silicon/Gordon_Moore_ISSCC_
021003.pdf.

30.
Steve Cullen, “Semiconductor Industry Outlook,” InStat/MDR, report no. IN0401550SI, April 2004,
http://www.instat.com/abstract.asp?id=68&SKU=IN0401550SI
.

31.
World Semiconductor Trade Statistics,
http://wsts.www5.kcom.at
.

32.
Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce,
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/home/gdp.htm
.

33.
See notes
22
–
24
and
26
–
30
.

34.
International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, 2002 update, International Sematech.

35.
“25 Years of Computer History,”
http://www.compros.com/timeline.html
; Linley Gwennap, “Birth of a Chip,”
BYTE
(December 1996),
http://www.byte.com/art/9612/sec6/art2.htm
; “The CDC 6000 Series Computer,”
http://www.moore cad.com/standardpascal/cdc6400.html
; “A Chronology of Computer History,”
http://www.cyberstreet.com/hcs/museum/chron.htm
; Mark Brader, “A Chronology of Digital Computing Machines (to 1952),”
http://www.davros.org/misc/chronology.html
; Karl Kempf, “Electronic Computers Within the Ordnance Corps,” November 1961,
http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance/index.html
; Ken Polsson, “Chronology of Personal Computers,”
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist
; “The History of Computing at Los Alamos,”
http://bang.lanl.gov/video/sunedu/computer/comphist.html
(requires password); the Machine Room,
http://www.machine-room.org
; Mind Machine Web Museum,
http://www.userwww.sfsu.edu/~hl/mmm.html
; Hans Moravec, computer data,
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book97/ch3/processor.list
; “PC Magazine Online: Fifteen Years of PC Magazine,”
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,23390,00.asp
; Stan Augarten,
Bit by Bit: An Illustrated History of Computers
(New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1984); International Association of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
Annals of the History of the Computer
9.2 (1987): 150–53 and 16.3 (1994): 20; Hans Moravec,
Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); René Moreau,
The Computer Comes of Age
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).

36.
The plots in this chapter labeled “Logarithmic Plot” are technically semilogarithmic plots in that one axis (time) is on a linear scale, and the other axis is on a logarithmic scale. However, I am calling these plots “logarithmic plots” for simplicity.

37.
See the appendix, “The Law of Accelerating Returns Revisited,” which provides a
mathematical derivation of why there are two levels of exponential growth (that is, exponential growth over time in which the rate of the exponential growth—the exponent—is itself growing exponentially over time) in computational power as measured by MIPS per unit cost.

38.
Hans Moravec, “When Will Computer Hardware Match the Human Brain?”
Journal of Evolution and Technology
1 (1998),
http://www.jetpress.org/volume1/moravec.pdf
.

39.
See note
35
above.

40.
Achieving the first MIPS per $1,000 took from 1900 to 1990. We’re now doubling the number of MIPS per $1,000 in about 400 days. Because current price-performance is about 2,000 MIPS per $1,000, we are adding price-performance at the rate of 5 MIPS per day, or 1 MIPS about every 5 hours.

41.
“IBM Details Blue Gene Supercomputer,”
CNET News
, May 8, 2003,
http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-1000421.html
.

42.
See Alfred North Whitehead,
An Introduction to Mathematics
(London: Williams and Norgate, 1911), which he wrote at the same time he and Bertrand Russell were working on their seminal three-volume
Principia Mathematica
.

43.
While originally projected to take fifteen years, “the Human Genome Project was finished two and a half years ahead of time and, at $2.7 billion in FY 1991 dollars, significantly under original spending projections”:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/50yr/
press4_2003.shtml
.

44.
Human Genome Project Information,
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/
privatesector.shtml
; Stanford Genome Technology Center,
http://sequence-www.stanford.edu/group/techdev/auto.html
; National Human Genome Research Institute,
http://www.genome.gov
; Tabitha Powledge, “How Many Genomes Are Enough?”
Scientist
, November 17, 2003,
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031117/07
.

45.
Data from National Center for Biotechnology Information, “GenBank Statistics,” revised May 4, 2004,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/genbankstats.html
.

46.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was sequenced within thirty-one days of the virus being identified by the British Columbia Cancer Agency and the American Centers for Disease Control. The sequencing from the two centers differed by only ten base pairs out of twenty-nine thousand. This work identified SARS as a coronavirus. Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, called the quick sequencing “a scientific achievement that I don’t think has been paralleled in our history.” See K. Philipkoski, “SARS Gene Sequence Unveiled,”
Wired News
, April 15, 2003,
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,58481,00.html?tw=wn_story_related
.

In contrast, the efforts to sequence HIV began in the 1980s. HIV 1 and HIV 2 were completely sequenced in 2003 and 2002 respectively. National Center for Biotechnology Information,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/framik.cgi?db=genome&gi=12171
; HIV Sequence Database maintained by the Los Alamos National Laboratory,
http://www.hiv.lanl.gov/content/hiv-db/HTML/outline.html
.

47.
Mark Brader, “A Chronology of Digital Computing Machines (to 1952),”
http://www.davros.org/misc/chronology.html
; Richard E. Matick,
Computer Storage Systems and Technology
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977); University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, EDSAC99,
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/UoCCL/misc/EDSAC99/statistics.html
; Mary Bellis, “Inventors of the Modern Computer: The History of the UNIVAC Computer—J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly,”
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa062398.htm
; “Initial Date of Operation of Computing Systems in the USA (1950–1958),” compiled from 1968 OECD data,
http://members.iinet.net.au/~dgreen/timeline.html
; Douglas Jones, “Frequently Asked Questions about the DEC PDP-8 computer,” ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/alt.sys.pdp8/PDP-8_Frequently_Asked_
Questions_%28posted_every_other_month%29;
Programmed Data Processor-1 Handbook
, Digital Equipment Corporation (1960–1963),
http://www.dbit.com/~greeng3/pdp1/pdp1.html
#INTRODUCTION; John Walker, “Typical UNIVAC® 1108 Prices: 1968,”
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/config1108.html
; Jack Harper, “LISP 1.5 for the Univac 1100 Mainframe,”
http://www.frobenius.com/univac.htm
; Wikipedia, “Data General Nova,”
http://www.answers.com/topic/data-general-nova
; Darren Brewer, “Chronology of Personal Computers 1972–1974,”
http://uk.geocities.com/magoos_universe/comp1972.htm
;
www.pricewatch.com
;
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?news/pricewatch/raw/pw-010702
;
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?news/pricewatch/raw/pw-020624
;
http://www.pricewatch.com
(11/17/04);
http://sharkyextreme.com/guides/WMPG/article.php/10706_2227191_2
;
Byte
advertisements, September 1975–March 1998;
PC Computing
advertisements, March 1977–April 2000.